De Anima
by ColgateKiss
Summary: In 1514, Henrikke wakes up, and picks up his red shield. He has no idea he will be dying today. A bit of a homage to Hal. Eventual Hal/Tom, and some philosophizing.
1. Chapter 1

**I am loving this season. I am loving Hal particularly. This is a homage, and an antidote to other Being Human fic I'm writing, which is filled with discos and geese and boys kissing. Chapter 2 up soon!**

**1514**

When morning wakes with a cold and holy brightness over the field of war, Henrikke stretches the sleep from his body, and pulls on his woollen coat and cap. Hoisting his red shield, polished to a heady shine, he steps out into the camp, a ragged bunch of huts and tents flanked by a stagnant river. It crouches next to a copse of barren trees, marked only by a narrow and uncertain track and invisible from the earthen road just metres away.

Henrikke swings his sword through the chill air, whistling and admiring it's gleam. Out of tents, from pallets, men materialise like some sleeping creature's dreams, rubbing pink eyes and muttering of morning. The sun casts spectral prisms - Henrikke feels strong.

He has no idea that he will be dying today.

Sitting down to breakfast, he receives his meagre bowl of pottage - oats, turnips, parsnips, boiled to a digestible mush. They've had no meat for three weeks now, and have been warned to expect none until spring. Henrikke eats quietly and efficiently; those who don't are liable to lose their meals to opportunists.

The priest intones his morning sermon. At the beginning of the war, they were given in ringing and devout Latin (which bare few of the men understand). Now, however, they are in the common tongue, and have become ... _less_ than devout, trembling, hollow. Henrikke isn't surprised. Like them, the priest is almost emaciated, and worse, has managed to lose two fingers of his left hand to frostbite.

He listens, the ramblings of this half-mad man more interesting than the rote learning of the Bible,

"An era ... perceives in the world ... reverberations of it's own strength, excitement, demonic enjoyment in an unforeseeable future. But at the same time ... its own weaknesses, inability for self abnegation and for life. The era follows and pursues itself, the viper that swallows it's own tale, that kills each new generation as it is born..."

The priest breathes heavily, moved to a restless silence. Henrikke looks round at the pale faces of the men, breakfast forgotten, morosely thinking on the priest's words. Only the camp surgeon looks calm, leaning back against a tree stump, smiling gently. The surgeon's face, Henrikke thinks, is an unrippled pool of dark water.

Henrikke's benchmate turns to him, "The priest'll not survive, he'll die here. Once the mind is gone, it's all gone."

Twisting his mouth, Henrikke shrugs, "We'll all die here, sane or not. Death doesn't care." He stands, dropping his bowl on the bench. Smiles at his shield as he hefts it to arm, "But not today, Dimitar. Today ... we slaughter."

Dimitar shakes his head, eyes wide, "You are too bloodthirsty. It's not normal. You should be called Vlad."

"Yes," Henrikke agrees affably, "Perhaps".

Then the horn is blown, and it is time to march again, perhaps for hours, and join the battle once more.

...

Henrikke does not love blood, necessarily. He does love living though, and has never felt more alive than when his own life force vanquishes another's. The theatre of war is the apogee of everything that makes his mind sing.

So when the lance comes calling for his heart, a small dark part of him is thrilled. He knows to twist swiftly away, to dance with death but not embrace. He sees the round crimson of the Muscovite's mouth as it bellows a war cry. He laughs delightedly at his speed, not realising that this time, he had not been quick enough.

And then he hears the waterfall of blood within himself, his beloved red shield now shining with wetness. As his eyes roll back they meet the sky, and the last thing he sees is the dark smudge of a crow as it flaps over the trees, a pockmark on skin of the world.

He wakes in a dirty cot, once-white, now dyed with the blood of tens of Poland's soldiers, and his in turn. Twisting his head he realises the ache of the world is inside his own body, sees his shoulder slashed to the bone. Feels the slow, slack blood come wheedling from within him, as if yearning to taste the air.

"So then," the shadows whisper in their regiments against the wall, "this is death, Henrikke."

Those shadows have him by the heart, dragging him to purgatory, while the life in him keeps leaping, trying to leave a too-abused body. With his consciousness fading, darkness trembling on the edge of light, Henrikke hears receding voices in his own language.

"Cannot save the arm - too much - kinder just to let him-"

He knows he will not hear them return.

He sleeps a death-sleep, and dreams he is a babe in arms, rocked in the cradle of hell.

He dreams he hears the missen-thrush of his childhood in Borovsk, choked by blood.

But then ... his fingers wake and scuttle on the bed, his eyes peel open like anemones, with a force of will. His pulse runs like a startled deer, his breath bewilders the air. The painful misery of a grey dawn hangs hard about the tent.

"Henrikke, you wake. So good, I was becoming concerned."

The surgeon, from the shadows. Is it ... is it the shadows or the surgeon who speaks? Or both?

"Hush."

And just like that, Henrikke can't speak, hard as he tries. His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, teeth clenched, lips pursed.

"Good boy. So easy, you humans. Humanity ... is the measure of things. _Humane_. The human essence."

He moves from the shadows. Henrikke watches him, paralysed by injury and sudden clutching fear. Aside from his apparent lack of fear at the priest's foretelling of doom, Henrikke had never thought to pay the man a second glance. Now, _now_ he does.

Of mid-height, with mid-brown hair curling about his ears. Nothing of note, nothing to distinguish him. Pale, as they all are. But never before has Henrikke seen anything move with such violent grace, with such deathly purpose. He doesn't even know his name.

"Alaric. My name." he smirks lazily, moving closer towards the cot. Henrikke wishes desperately for mobility, he wants to run, recoil. The surgeon pauses at the foot of the cot, his hand resting softly, meaningfully, next to Henrikke's ankle.

"So now, you _do_know my name."

His hand creeps closer,

"Strange, is it not, that you are human and thus, in some way_humane_ ... yet it is you that goes everyday to rend and disembowel. While I sew these bodies back up. And yet I am ... not."

There is a strange and angry light in his eyes. Which are impossibly black. Then he smiles, suddenly wry,

"Strange business, this being human. It makes no sense to me. I was going to sew you up, and see if gangrene took you. Or bleed you out."

He begins to move again, his eyes fixed on Henrikke's face. No, no, on his neck.

"Instead, brave soldier, you will lead me into the new world." the surgeon's body blocked out the candlelight; Henrikke drowned in darkness, "Don't worry, this won't hurt. Ah no, but that's a lie, of course."

The bite is silent agony, without even the release of a terrified scream. Henrikke's body aches for death, he wishes, prays for death, and doesn't feel the moment when oblivion takes hold.

And he does die. Even though he wakes. And_when_ he wakes, the pain is gone. And all that's left is blood - the need for it. The demand. It is his _right_.


	2. Chapter 2

**1796**

Henrich - as he now calls himself in attempt to remain contemporary - drifts through a mutating world, following Alaric's increasingly confused and damaged trails. It's clear that the man is going mad, his attempt to anchor himself to an ever-changing planet through Henrich failed.

And when Alaric has crumbled to dust by his own crazed, ancient hand, Henrich follows war instead.

And when there is no war to be had he creates it, against humanity.

Alone, his exploits seem crueller, even to him, too much time to think on pain and death and pleas for mercy. His satisfaction takes on a brittle fragility, wavering too easily, descending into regret too often.

When he meets others of his kind, he loathes them.

He travels to London on the promise of feast, drawn in by the promise of urban squalor and easy pickings. And oh, they are so easy. People are dirty, poor, unloving and unloved. One or two more disappearances each week makes no toll at all.

"Almost too easy ..." Hal murmurs, watching them bustle by.

Wrickles Marsh at midnight: the alley echoes with his footsteps and the gutter-ash of dusk. He followed a pretty young man from an ale house. Doesn't know why, never knows why someone or other catches his eye above the rest.

This one, at least, is cleaner than most. Lithe and strong, only a little drunk. He might even put up a fight - already knows he's being followed and his neck is tensed, strides slightly longer. Hal smirks, ready to break into a slow, predatory run and-

"Why're you followin' me?"

The boy rounds on Henrich, wagging an accusatory finger,

"You shouldn't cos it's odd an' I don't like _odd_."

Henrich blinks. This isn't usually how his brutal murders _go_.

"I'm ... going to kill you. Prepare to die."

His voice sounds uncertain, even to himself.

"Erm. Do I 'ave to? Just cos my mam's expecting me back an' it'll really piss 'er off if I got ... y'know, dead like."

Hal leans forward in disbelief, "Piss her _off_?"

The boy shrugs, "Yeah. Mad as a box o'rats. And probably screaming."

"Oh for -" Henrich is lost for words, "Please go away."

The boys face brightens and against all predictions, he grins, "Aint gonna kill me then?"

Henrich shakes his head, "I think I would find it far too exhausting."

"Oh," the boy looks confused, "So..."

"Before I change my mind," Henrich says between clenched teeth, "and please be aware of how ridiculous you are."

"Ha! Sure mate. 'm not the one in an alley bein' all 'kill you' 'm I?"

And with a final cheeky grin, he darts away into the shadows.

Henrich watches the space he had inhabited, hunger clawing at the back of his throat, but can't make himself regret the look of naive happiness in the young man's eyes - his completely unawareness of his own mortality despite having had an entire conversation with the physical equivalent of death.

The next night he returns to the alley, leaning nonchalantly against the cold, damp stone. The boy doesn't reappear - why would he? - but Henrich waits until dawn, listening to the cool drip of stagnant water on brick, and the rates scuttle about in the debris below.

Henrich spends a long summer of confused starvation - he tries to kill, to feed, but every terrified face beneath his fangs reminds him of that boy and his wide-eyed innocence. At first he thinks the hunger will kill him, that he will become a desiccated corpse, or his skin will rot off and melt away from the bone. This doesn't happen. But it burns, burns hard and hot in his veins.

In October, Spain declares war on Britain, and Henrich is one of the first to enlist himself. After all, killing men who have volunteered to die is not such a crime, is it now?

By November he is glutted on blood, the boy well forgotten (or at least pushed into the darkened corners of Henrich's mind), surveying the delicate morning after a night's battle, the call of the nightingale tinged with pain on the wind.


	3. Chapter 3

**1916**

Henry never thought he'd see a day when a sabre wielded by a strong and desperate man would be as nothing. Until, he faces the machine gun line, and realises just how naked he is in his skin.

He sees men die the way he had never seen them die before. Sees them walk into death, willingly, in thrall to the officers who sit back in the tents sipping tea from china cups. Difficult, he thinks, not to respect humanity in some small way having watched them walk slow and steady into a hailstorm of bullets, heads bowed towards death, stoic as rock. Their's not to reason why. This is what he admires - not, never the officers, but the salt of the earth, humanity in it's grubby glory.

They're calling it the Great War and great it is - great in scope, in consequence, in blood. Henry has never seen more vampires collected in one place - like carrion birds to a fallen beast, they come and they come.

Some choose to fight for the French, many for the Germans, some for the English. For those of them who have no prior allegiance, it's all too easy to charm one's way in, and sit a cuckoo in the proverbial nest. Many of the vampires, Henry notices, seem change camps at will, flitting between the side with the least rats in their trenches, and the best-fed soldiers. It's a solid strategy - keep moving, stay unnoticeable, be gone before the bodies are found.

Henry, who has lived in England more than anywhere for the past century, is loyal to the British. His accent is finally anglicised enough to get away with it, and the British have card games, and the best cigarettes. They are also far less superstitious than the French and Germans, which is handy when one is a vampire.

He's heard of a battalion from Bavaria, who all too quickly recognised the puncture wounds in one soldier's thigh, and were incredibly efficient in getting a priest from a nearby village to bless every drop of water they had.

For Henry, it's easier. The British laugh at old wives tales, and have a stiff upper lip when it comes to death. They like Henry with his open, handsome face and his broad shoulders, his cover story about a small village in Devon and a father who is a local teacher. Henry joined the 11th Battalion, and has quickly become one of it's stalwarts - he has even formed tentative alliances with some of the more amusing men there - those that refuse death and shellshock, instead retreating into macabre humour and niccotine.

"New batch of young'uns in today," Private Matthews drops heavily down onto the sandbag next to Henry's, folding his hamfist hands over his knees.

Henry looks up from his book, "Oh yes?"

"Yup. Just up from training. God it's going to be brutal." Matthews rolls his eyes indulgently. He comes across as a bit of a thug, but is a kind man, in that gruff country way. A little older than most at twenty-nine, and weathered, watching.

Matthews is one of Henry's favourite soldiers. He has not once seen the man hesitate to go over the top, not once seen him buckle under the fear of death. The man has, he knows, a wife and two children back in Surrey. He was a farmer, once. Now he kills and kills again, grim and stoic, and then comes back to camp to play cards with Henry.

Matthews lights a cigarette, offering Henry a drag. He waves it away, it seems to cruel to steal much-needed smoke from the man, when his lungs don't even function.

"Ah, here they come," Matthews mutters around his fag, "God they're children aren't they?"

Henry begins to nod lazily, it's really no concern what Her Majesty allows to die out here. But then, something catches his eye and he stops abruptly, "No..."

Because it _can't_ be. Because it's been over a hundred years and he smells nothing unusual about the boy. Because - no, no it _is_ him. As the caterpillar of new recruits moves through the trench towards him, it becomes painfully obvious to Henry that, as much as it can't be, really, it_ is_ the same boy. And he doesn't know his name. But hasn't forgotten his face - the face of the first human he had ever spared.

"Hullo," Henry waves as affably as he can, trying not to look like the sort of chap who'd try and murder a young lad on Wrickley Marsh at midnight.

The boy looks down at him, squinting into the gloom, "Alrigh' mate"

Henry bites his lip and widens his eyes, trying to suggest, 'well this is odd, us both being still alive after over a hundred years', with his facial expression. The boy looks worried, thick eyebrows furrowed,

"You alrigh' mate. Do ya ... is it the shellshock, is it? Do ya ...need an 'ug or owt?"

"A hug?" Henry exclaims, too loudly. He hears titters behind him. "No, _no_, I - don't you remember me?"

The boy shrugs, "Dunno mate, my memory's like a sieve it is, mum always said Tommy if you're head weren't screwed on ya'd lose it." He grins brightly, eyes wide and beguiling.

Henry blinks, "And losing your head would be a great shame," he tries.

"Innit though," Tommy agrees, before plonking himself next to Henry, all young long limbs and elbows, "Yeah mate. This aint so bad."

On his other side, Henry can feel Matthews' smirk. He ignores it.

Tommy turns out to be exactly the same: cheeky, rambling and completely unaware of danger in any of it's forms. On his second day, he sees a mouse and pops his head above the trenchline to watch it scamper off. The sniper misses his head by a centimetre.

From then on, Henry makes a special effort to keep an eye on him. If not for the past, and his interest in exactly what Tommy might _be_, then for the present, and for the innocent, all too sweet light in Tommy's eyes. For his youth, his distressing_ youngness_, and his wide smile. Slowly, as Tommy survives for days and then weeks, he begins to trust in his presence. And Tommy, he knows, trusts in his.

On a couple of occasions he makes subterfugal references to Wrickley Marsh, and murder, but this garners only offers of hugs from Tommy, so he quickly desists. Whatever's going on, and whether Tommy remembers or not, he's quite charming. And also extremely irritating.

But then, one day after porridge and a brisk wash under the arms and over the face, and after Tommy has played four rounds of snap with Henry and rambled on about ladybirds and bicycles and why the clouds are especially fluffy today, he's dead.

It's just another day, just another. They go over the top, Matthews on one side of Henry, and Tommy on the other, the way it has become. As they begin to run, Tommy grins and shouts, "Race you!" and Henry laughs, filled with blood and song and derring-do, and does.

Not quickly enough - the bullet tears a road through Tommy's chest. Tommy stumbles, limbs flailing, rifle trailing by it's strap. Henry, focussed on the German trench, hears Matthews' holler,

"Henry! Tom's hit!"

He looks across and yes, there's blood, a glug of it, and Tom's momentum is still carrying him forward, into another bullet, and another. Henry does the only things he can - he rugby tackles Tommy, rolling him into a bolthole in the middle of no man's land. He lands on top of the lad, who is panting wetly, lips rimmed with his own blood.

"Oh Lord," Henry mutters, his shaking hands pulling at the ties of Tommy's jacket, "Oh Lord."

The lad is done for, Henry knows it, he should just leave him. Or, at least, take advantage, and drink him up. But he doesn't. Instead, he grapples with his jacket, hands slick with red and unable to gather purchase.

Tommy looks up at him, eyes wide and rapidly filling with tears, "Am I - gonna -?" The question hangs unanswered, and Henry's hands still. He forces his face out of it's horrified crumple, and shakes his head,.

"Don't be stupid. Stupid boy, of course not. Not at all, never, never."

For one wild moment, Henry thinks he could turn him. But how? He has no idea how, dammit all. Alaric was never forthcoming, and too mad by the end, he never_ explained_ this. Nevertheless, Henry rips at his own inner wrist, ignoring the wrenching sting, and presses it to Tommy's mouth.

The boy's eyes widen in fear and repulsion, "What - what're ya-"

"Trust me!" Henry spits, voice cracking, and is aware of bloody tears falling thick and fast down his own cheeks, and mingling with Tom's escaping blood, "Please!"

Tommy dies, there in the bolthole, eyes fixed on Henry's, mouth too weak to swallow. Henry sees his soul leave, leaking away into the mud and blood and air. He stays there, curled over the body, for hours, long hours of night-time and hoarse cries and more bullets. But no, Tommy is dead.

Which makes it rather strange when, twenty years later, Henry sees him once again...

**1936**

It's only a glimpse, only a glimpse but it makes Henry gasp as if he's taken a hit to the solar plexus.

London, loud and dirty and full. It's the FA Cup Final and the streets are crammed with bodies. Henry is nominally here to hunt, but keeps getting distracted by waving flags and grinning faces, the incessant cheer of the human spirit.

He's going soft.

And then there, there, twenty people ahead, is a profile he recognises. Heavy eyebrows, a strong nose, sharp jaw, all softened by those large, limpid eyes as the young man looks round at the crowd, grinning along. It's Tommy.

And the _bastard_, Henry swears, he's still a bloody child.

"Tommy? Tom!"

Henry picks up the pace, trying to struggle through the milling crowd, desperation making him sharp and fast

"Gerrof mate, waitcha turn!" a large brute of a man glares at him, apparently unimpressed with the sharp elbow Henry had tried to employ. Henry glares, resisting the urge to rip out his jugular. That would go down badly, he feels.

When he looks back, Tom has disappeared. Into the crowd, or perhaps he never was.

Henry resolutely ignores the ache that growls in his chest. He knows that if he carries on in the same direction, his every look and movement will be for Tom, to try and find Tom. He sets his shoulders tight, grits his teeth, and turns back the way he came.

**1955**

Home. It's been a while since there was a place in the world called that, for Hal.

Leo is a help, a philosopher and a guide. In the evenings he reads to Hal, watched over by a sleepy Pearl, "We burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and earth opens to abysses."

He sighs quietly, and gently closes the book.

"What do you think, Hal?"

Hal smiles gently, "Good. It's ... good."

Leo returns the smile, and gets up, "I'm for bed, man. Will you ... be ok on your own?"

Hal nods, waving a lazy hand, already slipping off into a slow, sad sleep. In the periphery of his consciousness, he can hear Pearl and Leo talking on the stairs,

"Something so_ lost_ about him," Leo is murmuring, with a sigh.

Hal let's sleep drag him down, and thanks it, silently, for it's oblivion.


End file.
